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November was a busy month for me, and so I’ve fallen behind here. I should tell you why it was so busy! I have been writing and writing, mostly on projects I can’t tell you about till I hear back from people…that’s mostly it. I can tell you this much: I wrote a time travel story with no time travel in it, a first contact story with no contact in it, and a supervillain story with at least one too many villains in it. Also I have been working my way towards total knee replacement, which I now have a date for: not till February, but there’s a lot to do in preparation (I have to get tough!).

So what do I have to catch up on? Two publications, a guest blog, and a future publication (that I can talk about).

The guest blog is here at my friend Heather Rose Jones’ livejournal. She’s the author of, among other things, a series of fantasy novels set in Alpennia, a fictional European-like country in the eraly modern era (that is, not medieval). They’re really good, featuring smart, independent, largely lesbian, women who make sense in their own contexts, and solid, interesting world-building. And coincidentally, my blog is about world-building: why, for example, I have spent weeks physically researching a real-life Central European city for stories that are set in a secondary world that is most definitely not Central Europe.

All I’m going to say about that right now is that world has already produced several “plumblossom” stories (the ones I put up for free at Fictionpress or in The Slash Pile anthologies, or wherever–they are all interconnected and some day will be woven into a single book about rivalries among sentient trees and the people who serve them, as well as magicians both good and evil, semi-self-aware teargas canisters and other objects, terrible history, threatening conditions, and tentatively bright futures): most of a huge fantasy novel involving both a pig spirit and artillery nests, that needs serious sustained attention as soon as I clear the decks with these other projects: and the outline of a novel set in the medieval-equivalent time of that world, involving land fraud, magic, alchemy, and personal loyalty. In other words, I have been playing in it quite vigorously. You can read some of the stories here. The ones in that world are “A Day of Porn” (which is not porn), “The Greenest Boy in Town,” “Stromnik,” and “Striking.” Another story, “Picnic Day Night,” is available at The Slash Pile’s second Halloween anthology “Psychopomp” here.

Are you still with me? Because here’s something you can buy! Less Than Three Press (who else?) has published Tan-ni Fan’s anthology, Missed Connections, and it is available right now from the publisher and here and at most online distributors (that’s really true, too! I somehow ended up searching for Outside and I saw it in online bookstores literally all over the world!). It’s a great big anthology full of big juicy stories about second chances. My story, “Rab+Rob 4ever,” is not science fiction like a lot of my work, but it is fiction about scientists(well, science students, anyway)! Rob has a terrible memory for things that happened in his childhood, so it’s no wonder that when he meets Jack in his last year in college, he doesn’t realize that it’s the same person as Rab, the boy who trailed around after him in their preschool years. Jack (Rab) doesn’t seem any too happy to make Rob’s acquaintance again…

Do you remember me talking about my beloved lesbian mechanics, Elisabeth and Melissa, and their adventures on Route Zero, the road that connects alternate universes? It’s pre-order time for their story at Less than Three. As of today, there’s a sale going on at Less than Three Press, and there’s only five days left till publcation day! Sorry for all the exclamation points, but I’m still new enough at this to be impressed with myself. Elisabeth and Melissa are the kind of mechanics you really want in your community. They have their own tow truck, and Melissa can find your part if it’s available anywhere in the state, and if it isn’t, Elisabeth can fabricate it from a similar part. Even if the car in question comes from nowhere in this world…Elisabeth has a past, though, and while the Grand Jury wants to talk to her, she wants to find out why this odd car’s radio is playing tunes from a future she used to dream about in her past. Contains a non-violent carjacking.

Well, that’s it for today! Watch this space for a giveaway of the A&A ebook!

You have one more day to sign up for the drawing for a free copy of my book Outside! Just go to the post where I announced it, right here, and leave a comment with a way to contact you. I’ll be on the road tomorrow so I’ll probably do it late in the day.

Other upcoming dates: the anthology Missed Connections, edited by the redoubtable Tanni-Fan, which has my story “Rab+Rob 4 Evar,” is coming out November 11, and is available for pre-order now. And my multiple-universes science fiction novella, A and A Salvage, is also available for pre-order and is coming out December 9.

These three stories are really quite different one from another. Outside is about a science lab administrator on a deep space station who takes great effort to ensure that his friends have a good time and learns that he needs to make even a greater effort: “Rab+Rob” is about an environmental sciences student who discovers his memory is even worse than he thought it was: and A and A Salvage is about a pair of lesbian mechanics who figure out that the origin of a mysterious car also gives them dangerous knowledge about the fate of old friends (I have more to say about the world of Outside and also more to say about the adventures of Elisabeth and Melissa from A and A Salvage, but those stories are not written yet).

Also, more details about this later, but I have sold another piece, a story about a fellow whose parents emigrated because they were told their child would marry a tree…

There’s a complaint I keep noticing about some stories written by women about men who have romantic affairs with other men. It’s nearly, but not, symmetrical with the complaint women sometimes have about stories men write about lesbians. It’s this: the accusation that the characters are not men, that they are women in men’s disguise (or “chicks with dicks”). The nearly symmetrical but not really complaint is that men write lesbians who are not real women—they are fantasies. So, (some) men complain that (some of) the unrealistic characters they are reading about are the wrong gender, and (some) women complain that (some of ) the unrealistic characters they are reading about are not real. That’s a subtle difference, but I think it is significant, especially as I think that the thing they are reacting to in the writing is, in fact the same thing.

edit: I missed a crucial paragraph of this when I posted, so here goes:

“Chicks with dicks” is a hideous phrase, insulting to just about everyone: women, men, gay men, men whose mannerisms are more “feminine” than average. I’m not sure that “feminine” men should be called that, because the aspects of their behavior and character that mark them this way are not, generally, behaviors and personality characteristics that actually predominate in women either. I’m not sure that the label is completely wrong, though, as it sometimes seems to go with men who see themselves as rejecting aspects of masculinity they see as offensive. But I am interested in what drives the complaint behind it.

First of all when a man complains about “chicks with dicks,” I don’t think he’s reacting to characters who have physically or socially feminine markers. I think the aspects of a male character that throw men out of identifying with them, and which they identify as female, are not usually really feminine, but just wrong, and the men are grasping for what is wrong about the characters. Gender comes to mind because gender is the salient issue at hand in these stories written by women and purporting to be located in exclusively male sexuality. It’s not that the men are wearing the wrong clothes or using the wrong kind of hairbrush or deodorant. If they had those details or something like them, you’d think it was deliberate eccentricities on the part of the character. It’s more likely to be something about the character’s emotional presence, their expressions of self, the intangibles that you can stay up all night arguing about. But what these male characters are doing on the page that is wrong wouldn’t be right if you tried to make a female character do them, either.

But why do (some) male readers perceive this as feminized characters? I think, partly because they know that women wrote the stories, so the explanation “she doesn’t really know men because she’s a woman” is easy to come by. Of course it isn’t correct. But it’s an easy answer, so it almost has to be wrong.

It’s vexacious to try to summarize a book, whether you’re putting together a query, or writing a blurb, or trying to get someone to review it. It makes me want to throw my hands in the air and just go back and write some more stories and forget the finished ones.

This afternoon I submitted requests to a couple of online review sites that take them, though, and in the process I coined a nice fat name for the genre I declare I have created: The science fiction workplace buddy romance. I’m maybe a bit too smug about this. I immediately tweeted this, and then told my friends in chat, and now I’m telling everybody. I may email my son later so he can share in the deliciousness of that genere label.

As I’ve already told everyone who will listen and quite a few people who probably would rather not, I am not ashamed of piling up four adjectival nouns in one descriptive phrase. It’s positively Anglo-Saxon poetry. Anyway, now I want to go through my “stories to write” file and see how many of them could be called that.

Reminder: you can still sign up for a free copy of Outside right here.

And now that I’ve done some obligatory promotion of that book, I have edits to work on in another science fiction buddy workplace romance-this one is about lesbian mechanics who discover how to get to a whole new world through carjacking-and a manuscript I need to write, about something completely different. I’m sure I will tell you all about them when the time comes.

First, here’s one you can easily find and read: a short story called “Wink,” in which a bit of a misunderstanding arises between people who can choose their gender at will, and sometimes don’t choose one at all.

Second, on November 11, Less Than Three will publish an anthology edited by the marvellous Tan-ni Fan. It’s called Missed Connections and it contains my (not science fiction or fantasy) story “Rab+Rob 4evar” about a young environmental stiudies graduate with a terrible memory.

Somewhat later (I don’t have a date yet), Less Than Three will also be publishing A and A Salvage, in which a pair of lesbian mechanics discover a whole new world at war with itself, reachable from the backroads of the coastal mountains.

In the past these stories of mine were published, but good luck finding them in print(links are to the Internet Science Fiction Database):

Some people already know me, under one of three names: my given name, which you see at the top of this page;”ritaxis” on livejournal and ina few other places; and “plumblossom,” which is the name I used for the writing I did just-for-fun for several years.

I intend for this to be a more focused blog than my livejournal. Here I will just deal with writing and publishing and genre. I expect it to be, among other things, a handy space to keep readers posted about what I’ve got out and what I’ve got coming out, and of course whatever pops up that is somehow related to those things.

For example, right this minute I have a nice little science fiction novella, which LessThan Three Press has made available in several ebook formats for $5.99. You can buy it here.

Less Than Three is primarily a publisher of “anything but straight” romances. So, as you might guess, Outside is anything but a straight romance (pretty much however you take the phrase). Our fellows are geologists working in a larger complex of labs attached to an extra-solar space station. They are having an amusing little affair when Gamble is drafted against his will to head up a “field” expedition which is the great opportunity of Flint’s dreams. Because of their relationship, Gamble feels he can’t hire him, so he makes a nice recommendation for Flint when he leaves. When he comes back he finds Flint in a terrible bind, in a way that looks like Gamble is to blame. In the process of figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it Gamble starts questioning his whole approach to life.

I ought to say, even though it ought to be obvious, that this is a workplace friendship-romance and definitely not “hard science fiction.” I don’t even know whether the people are traveling sub-lightspeed (but I think they are). If you are the kind of reader whose pleasure in reading science fiction is speculating about what specific machinery the space station uses to simulate gravity, and what sort of drive the spaceship uses to leave the solar system, you might be happiuer with a different book. What was fun about writing this was thinking about the many varieties of social organization that people might invent for themselves when they live in space for some generations. I’m thinking of stations that are the size of large cities, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people (in this story I don’t get into it but I don’t think this space living is a response to the breakdown and impoverishment of Earth: I just can’t believe in a future where we can’t feed ourselves but we somehow have the resources to mail ourselves around the galaxy).

Gamble was raised in one variation: he had three parents growing up, who were a team of professional parent specialists. A friend olf his is in another, as she belongs to a complex chain marriage. And then there’s the sation itself, which is downright baroque, and finally Gamble’s relationship with Flint. Like most of my work, Outside contains a sizeable cast of diverse characters with their own lives and motivaions.

Just so you know, Less than Three is having a giveaway in celebration of the book coming out. But you only have till September 24th to sign up for your chance!